Atonement
by rhoddlet
Summary: Planets and stars and the moon. Post-Voldemort H/D fluff.


Title: Atonement  
  
Author: rhoddlet  
  
It's fluff, people. It's Harry/Draco, post-Voldemort fluff. I'm going to burn in literary hell (as if I weren't going there already for writing HP fanfiction in the first place.)  
  
Story idea and last line blatantly cribbed from "Remember" by the brilliant, beautiful, and otherwise way sexier than me slightlights; go and read it http://www.thedarkarts.org/authors/slights/R01.html  
  
Go read it people. It's the most creative, heart-aching and just plain *lovely* fic I've read in ages, and it inspired me to write fluff. Me. Ms. "The Empire of Light."  
  
*  
  
This is what seventh year is like for Harry:  
  
A blessing.  
  
Ginny and Dumbledore are dead. So is Fawkes, the bird who couldn't die, as are Oliver Wood, Lee Jordon, and Longbottom's parents. Parvati lost Padma; one of the twins has lost an eye along with half his face, and Voldemort shelled out Professor Snape so that he is as thin and dry as last October's twigs.  
  
Goyle is dead. Pansy Parkinson chose not to come back in September even though her sister had been cleared of charges whereas Millicent Bulstrode just disappeared. Gone. In November, her family has given her up for dead or lost deep in Akzaban, and in November, her brother came to collect her things -- all new -- which they'd bought and shipped to Hogwarts in September in the hopes that maybe she could use them if she ever showed up.  
  
Harry knows this. Sees it in the face of the new Charms teacher, in Trelawney's face as she sits in the Headmaster's chair at dinner, and in the empty spots in the House tables. Not so much in the lower years and not even too badly in the seventh years since they were a little too young to have the worst of it, but Harry remembers sneaking downstairs for a drink of water during Christmas holidays and seeing Mrs. Weasley sitting in the Burrow kitchen, with a cup of tea in front of her and staring off at the wall alone after she thought everybody had gone to bed. The silence, really, was worse than tears, and Harry remembers sneaking back upstairs, trembling with guilt and grief.  
  
Fred and George's year was hit badly. A lot of their friends from Ravenclaw died at Wooster Abbey, and they've put the joke shop on hold even though they finally have money to open it because of the reward they got from the Ministry along with their medals. They live in a small cottage near London.  
  
But, Harry. . .  
  
This year has been a blessing for Harry. He wonders whether he would have enjoyed school this much if it'd been free of Voldemort all along, whether he wouldn't be going into the Ministry instead of going to play for Puddlemere United after graduation if Voldemort had made his move when he was, say, thirteen instead of sixteen.  
  
Harry wonders this, but another part of his head knows that if Voldemort had made his move then, Harry would have died on the field at Wooster. He only lived, really, because Hermione had been as smart as she thought she was and because Ron had been braver than he thought he could be and because Draco ha --  
  
That was the key part, wasn't it? Hermione and Ron had been there all along, but Draco. . .  
  
Harry remembers afterwards, when they were in the medtent, when Harry had gone to visit Draco in the private little enclosure they'd made for him. Draco's pale, still face in the dim light of the tent and his cool fingertips moving across Harry's face like spiders in the darkness.  
  
"So this is the boy I killed Voldemort for," Draco says, finally. His voice is harsh, raspy from first screaming his throat raw, then from not speaking for days.  
  
"He killed your father too, you know." Harry returns. Draco's index finger was resting on Harry's upper lip; the second joint of his middle finger was pressed against Harry's. When Harry said that, he felt the fingers give a violent start, then begin trembling. Shivering, almost, and Draco made a strangled noise somewhere in the darkness.  
  
There was a moment of hesitation where Harry stared ahead into the darkness, at the faint white shape of Malfoy's head bent low over his hospital cot, and then, he reached forward and pulled Malfoy into his arms and onto his shoulder.  
  
Draco's tears were hot and enormous, but after that initial gasp, silent.  
  
Harry remembers the reception they had in the Great Hall after the announcement of the Head Boy and Head Girl for that year.  
  
Hermione had been practically radiant, glowing more brightly in her black school gown with its shiny Head Girl badge than Harry'd ever seen her, and Harry remembers going up to her and shaking hands with her father and mother who were more than a little bemused at the whole idea of their little Hermi being the Head Girl of a wizarding school like Hogwarts. Then, there was a photo session where a photographer from the Daily Prophet took pictures of Hermi and Malfoy together, and then there were some shots of them together, and then some of them by themselves. They only took one picture of Harry, and Harry noticed that they took rather more pictures of Malfoy than they did of Hermione.  
  
Hermione was a little miffed about this later, but she'd been so happy right then that she was smiling at everyone, even Peeves, even Malfoy, whom she'd come to a certain kind of understanding with after the battle. Ron still hated Malfoy though, and it was when Hermione ran off to bring an enraged Ron back that Draco met Harry's eyes.  
  
"Would you like to meet my mother?" he'd said, very calmly.  
  
Harry had blinked, and then a very tall, very pale woman in a neat black dress came up to them. Short hair, long neck, no jewelry, and Draco said, with strange slowness, "Harry, this is my mother. Mother, this is Harry."  
  
"Pleased to meet you," Harry had said and shook her hand. Her fingertips were cool just like Draco's, and when she stood straight again, her cool eyes were resting on Harry. There was a moment then, and then she said, very quietly,  
  
"It's nice to meet to meet you too, Harry." And then she'd turned to Draco and put her arm around his shoulder, saying, "Draco, there're some people who'd like to speak to you before I leave for the evening."  
  
She took Draco deep into the crowd near the punch table, but Harry noticed that she looked back at him, once. Funny expression on her face -- her mouth was stiff, and so were her shoulders, but her eyes didn't seem quite as pale as they had a moment ago. Draco had looked back, then, and shot Harry a thumbs-up.  
  
It'd been a gesture that Draco had picked up from him. It'd amused him immensely when Harry explained the origin of it to him even though Harry took pains to point out that it was known primarily from bad Muggle movies in the sixties and not the great Roman emperors.  
  
This year has been a blessing for Harry:  
  
Seventh year is always an awful lot of work, and it's been particularly true this year since the teachers feel a need to make up for the last half of sixth year, when nobody got much studying done. Just meters an meters of essays every week, enough reading to make even Hermione groan. (But just a little groan.)  
  
Harry's grades are better than they ever have been: he doesn't go out to the Common Room to work. It's hard staying out there for long because everybody's so loud and rowdy that you don't get any work done unless you've got a concentration like Hermione's, and after an hour or so there post-dinner, he always creeps back upstairs to his room and draws the curtains. Whispers lumos to his wand and spreads his books around him, and works until eleven, eleven-thirty at night when Ron and everyone comes back to the room to brush their teeth and clean up before bed.  
  
Which he does. Changes into his pajamas and jokes around in the bathroom, listens to Seamus talk about how he's definitely going to get into Lavender's pants before the end of the term, then walks back to his bed and lies down on the bed.  
  
He has the Invisibility Cloak balled up in his fist, and it trembles and shakes and fights to get out of his hand as the rest of the boys settle down for the night. Hermione comes by a little before midnight to make sure they're all in bed, and a couple times, Harry could swear that she's seen the Invisibility Cloak bouncing around in his hand. Those times, she looked at him for the briefest of moments, then smiled and made a show of walking out of the room with her back turned.  
  
At twelve oh eight, Harry lets the Invisibility Cloak settle around him. It practically sighs with happiness at being so close to him again, and then he slips off his bed in bare feet, carefully, so as not to wake up Seamus who has the bed next to him. He usually freezes when Neville turns over in his sleep, but after a moment's pause to make sure the curtains are drawn around his bed, Harry is out the door.  
  
Runs down the stairs as fast as his feet can silently take him, and then he's creeping out past the snoring Fat Lady, leaping out into the hallway, taking turns a little too quickly and skidding on the bare stone floors as his heart starts thumping, and he has to clutch at the Invisibility Cloak to keep it from flying away sometimes. He always takes the last left turn sharply like the Quidditch man he is, then slides to the end the corridor, right before the corner with the next hallway.  
  
It's twelve twelve, the witching hour.  
  
Harry is a little out of breath.  
  
The Cloak is tight and humming around his shoulders, so at first, he has to strain to hear the sounds of Draco finishing up his Head Boy rounds before turning in for the night. They get louder, though, and then Harry can listen to the footsteps get closer and closer, can feel his heart beating faster and faster.  
  
He counts the footsteps until Draco gets to the corner. Ten, nine, eight, six, four -- Harry has to press his eyes closed to keep himself from doing something drastic with excitement, push fingers against his lips to hold them closed -- two, and when he hears Draco's footstep just around the corner, Harry pulls his fingers away from his lips and drops the cloak, so that when Draco turns the corner, the first thing he sees is Harry, smiling like the moon coming out of the trees  
  
Draco, for his part, feels like he's caught the stars and the planets along with the moon. It's just like one day, he reached out, and instead of the Snitch fluttering against his fingers, it's Harry, and it's Draco's own heart that's beating so hard.  
  
Because not all falls are feints.  
  
Wronski didn't know what he was doing that first time he did it.  
  
Harry didn't know when he did it the first time, and some people say he's got a chance to be just as good as Wronski was if he works on his control a little. It was just this instinctive thing, for him, a sudden fire in his veins, and he did it without really thinking about it, much like he pulled Draco to him in the darkness of that medtent without really thinking about it.  
  
Harry doesn't know what he's doing now. Neither does Draco, actually, because this is Draco's first time being in love like this. This is Harry's first time being in love at all.  
  
So when Draco bends down to kiss Harry, it's so sweet that it feels like the first time every time, because, really it is. It'll always be the first time, always, and you know why?  
  
Because not all falls are feints.  
  
*  
  
A reviewed ficcer is a happy ficcer. 


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